LIPAc Technical Meeting 15

The 15th LIPAc Technical Meeting (LTM15) was held remotely on February 16 2023, to share a general overview of the LIPAc Unit present and future activities.

In the first session about the LIPAc status and commissioning plan, the Project Leader presented the progress of LIPAc with respect to the injector continuous wave campaign, the circulator 1B repair, and the couplers strategy (O-ring couplers are used, with an enhanced cooling capability to reduce the temperature at the inner conductor coupling part, see photo below) in order to resume operation in a timely manner. The SRF Linac assembly, the maintenance strategy and the commissioning objectives were also addressed.

The significanceof the LIPAc contributions to the preparation DONES and A-FNS was pointed out, in addition to the qualification of the accelerator concept and components. Other presentations and discussions included the revised experimental plan and the RFQ power couplers activities, on the critical path to restart beam operation.

The second session was about the LIPAc design enhancement. Regarding the injector, the scope of its upgrades has been updated based on the maintenance and the operational feedback in order to optimize maintainability and operability. As for the Radio-Frequency Power Systems, its maintenance aims to improve the system availability, while a prototype Solid State Power Amplifier is under design for its planned upgrade. Lastly, the Machine Protection System upgrade of the Control Systems is progressing well as its Preliminary Design Review was scheduled on the 28/29 of March 2023.

The Project Leader and LIPAc Unit Leader thanked all for the fruitful discussions and congratulated the team about the quantity and quality of work performed.

O-ring coupler assembly (left) and its vacuum test (right) prior to mount it to the RFQ